Built 2 Kill (2023) (Blu-ray Review)
DIRECTED BY: Charlotte Cayeux, Emi Electra, Marion Le Corroller
STARRING: dea Darcque, Judith Zins, Lilas Richard
RATED: UR/Region: O/1:78/1080P/NUMBER OF DISCS 1 (BD-r)
AVAILABLE FROM Rising Sun Media
Anthology horror movies are a lot like a box of discount chocolates. A few pieces are surprisingly good, a few are questionable, and there’s always one that leaves you wondering who approved it in the first place. Built 2 Kill (2023), directed by Charlotte Cayeux, Emi Electra, and Marion Le Corroller, understands this tradition and dives headfirst into it with a collection of blood-soaked stories that range from entertainingly twisted to gloriously unhinged.
The film serves up multiple tales of murder, madness, and bad decisions—the three food groups of any respectable horror anthology. Like most anthologies, your enjoyment will depend heavily on which segments click with you. Some stories hit harder than others, and a few feel like they could have used another pass through the editing room. That’s just part of the anthology experience. If every segment were equally good, horror fans wouldn’t have anything to argue about online.
One thing Built 2 Kill gets right is that it never feels boring. Even when a particular story isn’t fully working, the movie is usually only a few minutes away from moving on to the next nightmare. That’s one of the great advantages of anthologies. Unlike some modern horror films that spend two hours building toward a reveal everybody figured out in the first fifteen minutes, anthology films know when to pack up and leave before overstaying their welcome.
The gore fans should be reasonably happy here as well. The film doesn’t shy away from violence, and several segments deliver the kind of practical-effects carnage that horror audiences appreciate. Nobody is reinventing the wheel, but there are enough nasty moments scattered throughout to keep the bloodhound crowd entertained.
Visually, the movie has the scrappy charm of independent horror. It doesn’t have studio money, and thankfully it doesn’t pretend that it does. Instead, it leans into creativity, weird concepts, and a willingness to get messy. Sometimes that’s worth more than a giant budget anyway. Horror history is filled with low-budget movies that succeeded because they had imagination rather than resources.
That said, anthology films always face the same problem: consistency. For every segment that lands, there’s usually another that feels like it wandered in from a different movie. Built 2 Kill is no exception. The quality swings around enough that your favorite segment will probably be somebody else’s least favorite and vice versa. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a horror convention dealer’s room—there’s something for everyone, but not everything is for everyone.
What ultimately carries the film is its enthusiasm. This isn’t one of those sterile, committee-designed horror productions that feels like it was assembled by algorithms. It’s a movie made by people who clearly love the genre and understand that horror should occasionally be weird, excessive, and a little ridiculous.
At the end of the day, Built 2 Kill won’t dethrone classics like Creepshow or Trick ‘r Treat, but it doesn’t need to. It’s a fun, scrappy anthology packed with enough blood, creativity, and twisted storytelling to keep horror fans engaged. Some stories work better than others, but that’s practically a requirement for the anthology genre at this point.
If nothing else, Built 2 Kill proves that horror anthologies remain one of the best ways to experience a bunch of bad ideas and good ideas at the exact same time.
Extras
- Trailers
- Short Film
- Behind the Scenes
